Mortuary Confidential: Undertakers Spill the Dirt

“My husband recently died,” Claire said to me, “and I just can’t stand the thought of going to a cocktail party and doing nothing but accepting half-hearted sympathies from his colleagues. The idea is simply macabre. I just wanted to…come somewhere slightly anonymous and soak up holiday cheer.”

I agreed. As we talked more, she told me of her plans to form a hospice organization. I encouraged her, telling her what she planned to do would provide an important step in the dying process, and that I, as one of the town’s many funeral directors, saw the importance of hospice work on a daily basis. She thanked me for my kind words and I didn’t see her until the next Christmas party.

I asked her how her hospice program was coming. She looked surprised that I had remembered, but then told me she had just opened her doors for business the month before. She had named her company Stone Hospice after her late husband, Stone Morgan. I congratulated her and reiterated my previous year’s praises of the work hospices do.

A couple of weeks later, Claire called my office and asked me if I’d be available to make some arrangements with one of her patients. I told her I’d be delighted. I met with Claire, the patient, and the patient’s daughter. The patient died a few weeks later and I buried him.

Over the following years I received periodic calls from Claire to make arrangements for her patients. Some would linger. Some would die quickly. And just as she had cared for them when they were dying, I would treat them with the same dignity once they had died.

Claire and I had been working together a long time when she called me down to her office to make arrangements. It was unusual, since I usually went to the patient’s house for such meetings, but I’ve found in my business nothing is unusual.

When I arrived I gave her a quick hug. “Where’s the patient?” I asked.

“Sit down, R.J.,” Claire said. “I have something to tell you.”

“Oh?”

“I’m the patient. You’re here to make arrangements for me.”

“No!” I said. “You?”

“It’s cancer. Inoperable.”

“Claire—”

She held up her hand. I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination, or if her cheeks didn’t look as full as I remembered. “Look, R.J., we both deal with death on a daily basis. It’s not something most people want to do, but it’s something that has to be done. There have to be people like us in society, people who aren’t afraid to look death in the face day in and day out. Sure, I’m angry that I feel like I’ve been cheated out of a full life, but I’m not scared to die.”

“Radiation and chemo?” I asked.

“Already tried. Didn’t work. I’ve got three months to live. I want you to handle things when the time comes.”

Claire told me the details of the funeral she wanted, and she asked me to care for her family as she had seen me care for countless grieving families that had passed through her program. She wanted assorted cheeses and wine offered at her viewing. She wanted a harpist and her favorite Beatles song played during the service. She wanted the pallbearers to wear white gloves and yellow ribbons, and most of all, she wanted two white doves released in the cemetery, one for her and one for Stone.

When I left, we hugged.

Claire Morgan died sixty-four days later. She was 58.

She is the only person I know who had the courage to face death with such grace when her husband died, and then face her own mortality with honesty, poise, and…courage.

The hospice has since flourished. I think it is a fine legacy to a courageous woman.

PART IV Wakes, Funerals, and Burials

I was sitting outside a funeral one day when two men pulled pistols and had a good ol’ fashioned shootout before my very eyes. Surprised? I sure as hell was, but as at any social event, anything can happen at a funeral, and usually does. Sometimes the attendees’ tensions boil over as seen in “Wake Combat.” Other times some total, random, external force that has nothing to do with the funeral, can affect it, as in “Duel at High Noon.” Either way, wild stuff can, and does, happen. I hope, though, you’ll never have to attend a funeral as “exciting” as some in this section.

What exactly is a funeral?